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The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

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Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#91

Post by danielh »

purrcat259 wrote: post #43
danielh wrote: post #9

If this short read piked your interest in Stuxnet, I can recommend the book "Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon". It explains in great detail how Stuxnet worked and, which I found the most exciting, how it was discovered and reverse engineered.

I read this book a while ago. Whilst I enjoyed the multiple viewpoints it provides (some claim that Stuxnet was actually quite sloppily written, depending on numerous factors), it happened to be one of those books which wrote 100 pages worth of information in 400 pages instead and dragged every little point on. YMMV.

If you read this book purely for its informational value, I agree with your assessment.

That being said, I read it mostly for entertainment and I think the author did a good job of packaging a lot of factual information into a captivating story.

That being said, not all parts are created equal. There are quite a few pages dedicated to looking at the number of centrifuges Iran was installing and amount of gas they enriched, as this were the metrics Stuxnet was affecting. To me, that was as exciting as reading a company's monthly inventory report.

But I guess that's to be expected in a book that tells a true story instead of just being based on true story.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#92

Post by a-dub »

a-dub wrote: post #87
some_account wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a state actor, it's not difficult to gather a couple of programmers from the "antivirus" and security field and build something that is hard to detect. It would be impressive if it was the work of a teenager but it's not.

The SCADA stuff was novel and interesting though and goes above and beyond your average malware both in what it did and the idea to do it in the first place. A really creative hack, so to speak. (or destructive? anti-destructive? shrug )

And just to reiterate. They built a rootkit that stealthily sabotaged an effort to build nuclear weapons in a way that just made it look like the people who were trying to do it were just incompetent...

If that's not cool, I don't know what is...

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#93

Post by baud147258 »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #68
nathanm412 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're quickly heading toward the age of the first Virtual WMD. The implications can be as wide as your imagination, but possibly worse than existing WMDs.

I'm having a hard time imagining a virtual WMD that is worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people.

If you can shut down enough utilities (electricity, mobile telecommunications, television & radio station, water treatment plants, access to water...) at the same time on a wide enough area, it would be devastating.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#94

Post by uptown »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #68
nathanm412 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're quickly heading toward the age of the first Virtual WMD. The implications can be as wide as your imagination, but possibly worse than existing WMDs.

I'm having a hard time imagining a virtual WMD that is worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people.

This article is relevant:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-food-trade-chokepoin...

It highlights the shipping "chokepoints" where disruption causes potential food crisis for where the ship had intended to deliver its payload. If the infrastructure which manages these pathways is attacked, the security of these regions is in jeopardy.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#96

Post by JadeNB »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #68
nathanm412 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're quickly heading toward the age of the first Virtual WMD. The implications can be as wide as your imagination, but possibly worse than existing WMDs.

I'm having a hard time imagining a virtual WMD that is worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people.

> I'm having a hard time imagining a virtual WMD that is worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people.

Incidentally, my impression has always been that, at least with the comparatively low-yield atomic weapons that have actually been used, it's not the instant obliteration that's the biggest problem, but rather the lingering effects of fallout and radiation sickness.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#97

Post by Udik »

nl wrote: post #79
Udik wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Iran is not trying to build a nuclear weapon, as it has been proven again and again by the thorough inspections and controls allowed by the JCPOA agreement, which the US have just undermined and probably killed for good.

Err, they absolutely were trying for a nuclear weapon. That’s what Stuxnet and (later) JCPOA were trying to stop.

You're confusing uranium enrichment with attempts to build nuclear weapons. Irans's research into nuclear weapons has ended in 2003, 15 years ago. Iran has nuclear power plants though, and uranium enrichment is needed to fuel them.

I think the reason Trump and Netanyahu are so enraged by the JCPOA agreement is that it makes concessions to Iran in exchange of.. nothing, since Iran already didn't have any active nuclear weapons research. The purpose of the continued insistence on Iran's nuclear threat is to weaken it, and the JCPOA effectively kills this strategy.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#98

Post by baud147258 »

stef25 wrote: post #66
Yajirobe wrote: post #56

I have a question. Since the worm travels from USB to USB, does that mean that it infected thousands (or more) of regular people USBs but did nothing, until it found itself in a purity facility? Or was the worm somehow directly sent (physically or digitally) to the facility?

A usb drive discreetly dropped in the parking lot, labelled cat memes would probably do the trick

Are cat memes popular in Iran too?

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#99

Post by Certhas »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #68
nathanm412 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're quickly heading toward the age of the first Virtual WMD. The implications can be as wide as your imagination, but possibly worse than existing WMDs.

I'm having a hard time imagining a virtual WMD that is worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people.

Blackouts. Do what Stuxnet did to the control rooms of a large number of power plants, spinning up the machines to hard, coordinate this attack so it triggers in a large number of places.

If you can pull this off for a continental scale, you're looking at potentially months to restore power to everywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2015_Ukraine_power_gr...

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